Battery Monitor [SOLVED}

chzuck · posted: 2014-04-14 13:34

I am trying to get a battery monitor working on my T22 laptop. I haved tried several ideas posted on here and none have worked. Under System Information, when I select battery, it says No battery found on this system.
When I check via acpi -b I get:

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$ acpi -b
Battery 0: Discharging, 54%, 00:52:07 remaining

So, it does recognize there is a battery, I just cannot get it to display on the screen. It is a needed item on a laptop.

Eino · posted: 2014-04-14 14:04

Try this, and add it to your conky
Open the terminal and type:

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$ ls /proc/acpi/battery

There can be various kinds of output:
CMB0
BAT1
BAT0
...etc

If it is BAT0
add the following to your conky below the TEXT line

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${battery BAT0}
${battery_bar 7,90 BAT0}
${battery_percent BAT0}

You can put the percentage and the bar together on the same line by doing this.

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${battery_percent BAT0}${battery_bar 7,90 BAT0}

chzuck · posted: 2014-04-15 02:54

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$ ls /proc/acpi/battery
ls: cannot access /proc/acpi/battery: No such file or directory

Here is what I got. I went ahead and added your code anyway, but still did not get any battery info.

fatmac · posted: 2014-04-15 14:46

Try changing BAT0 to BAT1, & see if that helps.

chzuck · posted: 2014-04-15 15:40

Did not change anything.

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$ acpi -b

Above is the only way I can find info on the battery.

chzuck · posted: 2014-04-15 18:32

Another good ending. I went to the antiX-FAQ page and read some of the info under Conky. I followed their example of code for a battery monitor. Some of my unsuccessful attempts before may have been my fault. When I made a code change, I would restart antiX to hopefully reflect changes in Conky. In the write up it was mentioned to toggle Conky from the desktop. I added the code, toggled Conky and now I have a battery monitor. Still learning! Little successes are good!

fatmac · posted: 2014-04-15 18:34

You'll soon be up with the rest of us........

rokytnji · posted: 2014-04-15 19:06

fatmac wrote:You'll soon be up with the rest of us........

batti-gtk-solved-t4662.html

__{{emoticon}}__

chzuck · posted: 2014-04-15 19:10

fatmac,
I think that will be quite some time, if ever!

chzuck · posted: 2014-04-16 00:15

Thought I had it, but each time I reboot I have to turn conky off then back on for the monitor to show. It is probably something easy, but I don't know what to do to make it appear when antiX boots up.

jdmeaux1952 · posted: 2014-04-16 00:33

chzuck wrote:Thought I had it, but each time I reboot I have to turn conky off then back on for the monitor to show. It is probably something easy, but I don't know what to do to make it appear when antiX boots up.

I had the same problem before. It appears to be linked to which kernel you use with with desktop manager theme. I'll have to see how my conky was setup to work. (I'm on a different computer.)

Dave · posted: 2014-04-16 01:00

chzuck wrote:Thought I had it, but each time I reboot I have to turn conky off then back on for the monitor to show. It is probably something easy, but I don't know what to do to make it appear when antiX boots up.

This is probably because of the default wm being icewm and the default conky ~/.conkyrc. If you take the battery code out of the ~ / . Conkyrc and put it in ~/.conky/icewm-conkyrc or whatever the exact name is, then it should work when you reboot. I cannot recall the reason why there are two conkyrcs, but it seems to me that this is more than likely the cause of confusion.

chzuck · posted: 2014-04-16 02:35

I could not find the second conky file.
Strike the above. I kept looking and found it. I have it both places now and it appears to work when I reboot. I also changed to a 12 hour time format.

duncan_mk · posted: 2014-04-17 18:38

I had this probllem back in 2012:

post26689.html#p26689

but couldn't find any help.

Are you using a Dell? There do seem problems which are specifically connected with Dell machines - see:

post26228.html#p26228

Thanks for your post. I will see if I can (now) get my battery to show under conky!

dmk

chzuck · posted: 2014-04-17 22:20

Not using a Dell. This is on an IBM T22 ThinkPad.